Facebook Puff Piece Stirs Controversy For NYTimes Writer

Last month a Facebook funded report from the Governance Lab (GovLab) titled The Power of Virtual Communities studied the role that online groups play in building "new kinds of communities they might not normally form in real space." According to the report, "77% of people surveyed say the most important group they are part of now operates online."

The report goes on to say all kinds of nice things about the "1.8+ billion people" who "use Facebook Groups every month" with "more than half of all users" in five or more groups. They even recruited The New York Times columnist, David Brooks, to guest post his very complimentary thoughts on the topic as well.

However, the unpaid-for post by Mr Brooks, who works with the Facebook funded Aspen Institute's Weave Project, was apparently a concern to his parent publication eliciting this statement from Eileen Murphy, a spokesperson for the New York Times, who told BuzzFeed News,

David's editors were not aware of the blog post or panel discussion, and they are discussing with him now what additional steps he might take to make sure that his work with the Weave project doesn't create any appearance of conflicts with his Times journalism.

Buzzfeed went on to say,

Brooks' ties to Facebook raise questions of conflicts of interest at the world's most influential newspaper, and highlight how the social network is working to rehabilitate its brand after years of criticism and scrutiny for its roles in spreading